SerpApi.Org
It would be difficult to overstate the influence Taylor Swift has had over the pop scene in this decade. She was a major commercial force throughout the 2010s, but her sway over how music is produced and consumed and what audiences are looking for reached a new level when artists who came of age listening to her music started making their own. She didn’t invent the idea of catchy songs about infatuations and breakups where the protagonist’s experience can be mapped to a singer’s life, but she perfected it. Of the dozens of artists who have followed in Ms. Swift’s wake, singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams is among the more successful.
After a couple of EPs, Ms. Abrams—she’s 26 years old, and grew up in Los Angeles—broke through with her 2023 debut album, “Good Riddance.” She collaborated with songwriter and producer Aaron Dessner (Ed Sheeran, Noah Kahan), a member of the moody indie-rock band the National who became an in-demand creative partner following his work on two 2020 collections by Ms. Swift, “Folklore” and “Evermore.” Ms. Abrams was nominated for a Grammy for best new artist, and her song “Us” from her 2024 LP, “The Secret of Us,” featured Ms. Swift and garnered her a second nomination from the Recording Academy, for best pop duo/group performance.
But strong support from the entertainment industry can have a downside: Her father is director J.J. Abrams, who has helmed blockbusters in the “Mission: Impossible” and “Star Wars” franchises among many other hits, and fairly or not she has been accused of benefiting from nepotism. Regardless, her first two full-length releases squarely fit within contemporary trends in confessional pop. Ms. Abrams’s third LP, “Daughter From Hell” (Interscope), hints at a desire to expand her music in ways that never materialize.
While the title of the new set might suggest material a tad more unhinged than what we have heard from Ms. Abrams before, the sound and subject matter are not appreciably different from her first two albums. The opening “Hit the Wall” begins with a gentle repeating synth pulse and spare piano chords, dropping us into the familiar world of Mr. Dessner’s productions. As Ms. Abrams sings about a mental-health crisis, the tempo increases and a string arrangement hints at drama. “I try to be violent, but I get caught / A room full of doctors and an inkblot,” she sings with her hushed diction. The following track, “Death Wish,” is about the torment of a new love gone bad, and it unfolds over plucked acoustic guitars and a distant bass drum that sounds like a heartbeat. And the midtempo ballad “The Knife” describes a collapsing relationship as a mortal threat, akin to a dagger jabbed into one’s side or a case of kerosene waiting to be ignited.
While the situations Ms. Abrams describes look harrowing on paper, the music never makes you feel it. There are few surprises, in either her storytelling or the arrangements. The melodies, lyrics and chord sequences evince a great deal of craft, yet they almost always head in exactly the direction you expect them to, and never hit as hard as they should, in part because of the limitations of Ms. Abrams’s voice. In her early songs, her singing rarely rose above a whisper, suggesting the quieter and more conversational mode sometimes deployed by two of her other influences, Lorde and Lana Del Rey.
She occasionally experiments with vocal dynamics, hoping to convey the desperation she finds herself in. The album’s title track is a tribute to the singer’s mother, and a thank-you for hanging in there when her daughter didn’t make things easy. It’s a welcome outlier in terms of production on the set, with a growling, distorted guitar, but Ms. Abrams’s singing doesn’t match the ominous tone. She capably belts out the chorus yet never conveys the stakes. “Good Reason,” where her phrasing is closer to a croon with a touch of country, is a better fit, and her multi-tracked voice on the piano-led weeper “Broke My Heart” captures the intended sense of yearning.
At this point, Mr. Dessner’s instantly identifiable studio techniques—stately pianos, dry and uninflected recordings captured up close, rushing builds when a song lurches toward a climax—have become shopworn. While Justin Vernon of Bon Iver contributes writing and production to several tracks, the dreamier aesthetic of his own records is nowhere to be found. There’s something instructive about the way Mr. Vernon’s presence is so difficult to discern. Soft rock made a huge impact on Mr. Vernon’s music, which would seemingly make him a great fit for Ms. Abrams’s work. But the air, space and instrumental cohesion of touchstones like, say, Bonnie Raitt are nowhere to be found. Taken as a whole, “Daughter From Hell” comes across as claustrophobic—the sonics are so precise and manicured and the subject matter is so specific that the record is like being trapped inside an ornate diorama as tiny figures are carefully arranged.
Mr. Richardson is the Journal’s pop and rock music critic. Follow him on X @MarkRichardson.